Kimberly Jermain

Kimberly Jermain is a pastel artist who has experimented with drawing underwater while observing marine life for reef studies at the Palau International Coral Reef Center. She describes the challenges of trying to capture what she sees:

"I work on 300lb. watercolor paper, affixed to a plastic cutting board with duct tape. I draw with oil pastels (that I bring down in a plastic bag with holes in it) for twenty minute periods at a time to keep my perception of color accurate (rods and cone adjust to color and do not see distinctions clearly after 20 minutes). The difficulty is in staying in one place and juggling the pastels in order to work as quickly as one needs to to get an accurate record of color. It doesn't help that the marine life is moving all over the place too. But then, anyone trying to take a census would have experience with that!"